The store’s message tubes

Original fiction extract.

While my mother chose a coat, the assistant let me stand near the old message tubes behind the counter. Two brass pipes rose into the ceiling. I could not see where they went. The assistant put a receipt into a small cylinder, closed its lid and placed it inside the mouth of one pipe.

The cylinder vanished with a satisfied gulp. A brief rattle climbed beyond the ceiling, then ran away through the unseen rooms above us. I imagined the building wearing a necklace of secret tunnels. Somewhere inside it, our little receipt was travelling without a person to carry it. The assistant went back to folding tissue. I kept watching the pipe’s dark round opening, which seemed to know something the rest of the shop did not. When the reply arrived, it knocked twice against its metal cradle: a tiny impatient visitor, demanding to be let out.

The assistant opened the cylinder and counted the change into my mother’s hand. I asked whether I could send another message. She smiled and said that we had already bought the coat. On the way out, I looked up at the ceiling above the display mannequins. All those ordinary rooms had acquired routes I could not follow.

Choose three powerful words or phrases from the extract above. Analyse how the writer uses language to convey the child’s impression of the message-tube system.

Write about 200 to 250 words.